How to Acheive Your Goals: 5 Tips That Lead to L&B

 If you follow us on our instagram, you may have seen this week’s 5 Tips Tuesday was about How to Achieve Your Goals. We wanted to give a little more insight into our journey and discuss how a casual lunch conversation between friends about their passions and interests blossomed into what is now Learn & Burn! Take a look at our 5 Tips for How to Achieve Your Goals, and hopefully they can ignite some motivation in you to complete yours.

Finding our “why” was perhaps the easiest step for us, as we always had a burning desire to create a new, effective way of working with kids that incorporated physical fitness with mental health. Although our early career forced us to take a more traditional path, we never lost sight of what truly ignited us. Most people struggle with discovering their passions and values because they are often pressured to fit into society’s expectations. Dig deep. Sit with yourself. Dream big. Ask yourself what makes you happy? What gets you excited? When you think this way, you will find your “why”.

Shannon and I had many goals. Well I should say, I had many goals since I am an undisputed a 7 on the Enneagram test (more on this later for those not familiar!), which means that I have many ideas that can be somewhat distracting and unrealistic.  Luckily, Shannon is not a 7 so she helps me focus when I need to! It was important for us to sit down and prioritize our goals. We had to figure out what was realistic vs. what was our egos vs what was a random idea, and we had to figure out if it truly aligned with our ‘why’ (see tip #1). Ask yourself: “Where do I want to be in one month?” Where do I want to be in 1 year?” Where do I want to be in 5 years?” Specific goals lead to accountability. Vague goals lead to excuses.

Part of achieving your goals is putting yourself out there and taking risks. It’s not only a part of growth, but it is a part of creating opportunities! This was probably the scariest step for me because being in familiarity is comforting, easy, and safe, but it will keep you exactly where you are. Goals are meant to push you forward, not keep you stagnant. What helps push me is this quote: “There is no growth in comfort and no comfort in growth.” The goals you have are only ideas on paper if you do not put action into it. What separates an idea from a goal is action.

The funny thing is once you do tips 1-3, tip 4 usually comes naturally. When you start aligning with your ‘why’ and taking action from that intention, you will create opportunities to meet like-minded people, and subsequently, you will reevaluate the people in your life who are no longer helping you to grow. Once Shannon and I started to fully commit to growing Learn & Burn, other professionals and networks started to cross our paths who shared the same passion and desire to provide integrative care for children! The amount of coincidences and random connections were truly unbelievable, as if they came out of thin air just to confirm that we were on the right path! This made it so much easier for us to let go of the people and things that were holding us back. We had to simultaneously let go in order to let in. 

Full disclosure, Learn & Burn originated as a school curriculum (which we are still hoping to do someday!), and we were ready to rock and roll, but then the coronavirus hit just as we were about to strike a deal to be a part of after school programs in LA. Everything came to a halt. We were devastated and lost. Two years of planning and dreaming had to be shifted within a matter of weeks as we were forced to adapt to this new era. We are still in the process of figuring out what that shift will look like, but what has helped us is embracing that this journey will change, and not just because of a pandemic, but because that is what effective and successful people do. They adapt, accept failure, remain positive, and thrive.  You can too!

Listen, no one said it was going to be easy. If they did, they were lying. Chasing a dream is hard, achieving a goal is even harder. Anyone can chase a dream until they give up the second they realize it’s too hard. Achieving a goal requires change and change requires sacrifice. This goes back to tip #1: finding your “why”. Your reason for wanting to achieve your goal has to be bigger than the sacrifices that will be made along the way; when you find your why, you will find a way. Learn & Burn was scary to start. We had to sacrifice our security, our finances, our training, our jobs, but all of that was easy once we realized it was no longer worth it to compromise our passions and our dreams for the price of a safety net. We had no doubt that what we wanted to achieve was bigger than all of that and we had to trust that with every scary step of the way, it would be worth it. What is worth it to you?

-Written by: Dr. Jesi Sasaki, PsyD.-